My Cat Has Super Powers

I know what you're thinking, you're thinking that my cat doesn't have super powers. You are both wrong and incapable of understanding all of the power that can be packed into a cat this size. He's 20 lbs of giant cat cuddle and he is a force to be reckoned with. Most people don't realize it because so few people actually get to see him. He's a bit shy, and he doesn't socialize with visitors often. There are a few exceptions of people he has decided he loves upon first meeting, but it's rare. Most people have to win him over. But none of this really has anything to do with his super powers. It's just an intro to my good pal Errol, aka Chubbs.

No, the super power is evil and stealthy. See, my pal Chubbs there is a big fat kitty. He's practically got his own gravitational pull, and as a result, his primary job seems to be generating body heat. On top of that, he's got super soft cuddly fur which helps hold in all of that body heat. So when he sits on your lap, or cuddles up against you he's so warm and snuggly and suddenly you find yourself getting sleepy. Very very sleepy. That's right, my cat can put you to sleep like it's his friggin' job. I defy anyone to let him lay on their lap and not start to get drowsy. Even Jason, who never naps and rarely just nods off on the sofa, is powerless to resist it. Ten minutes of Errol snuggle and he's out. It can't be helped. The cat lulls you into comfort and a sense of security and then you are asleep and you don't even remember when it happened. I'm convinced this is part of Norbert's doing, as she is probably having him test his powers so that some day she can have him put us to sleep and then kill us in our sleep, or at the very least arrange a sacrifice to her demon gods of evil.

On Sunday I laid on the couch watching Jason play video games and the next thing I know, Errol is laying on my chest and I've been sleeping for 4 hours. WHEN DID THAT HAPPEN?! I'm telling you, this cat had better use his powers for good instead of evil.

Women Are So Irresponsible

Today I was sitting at work eating my lunch and trolling my usual set of Hollywood gossip blogs when I clicked over to People.com and saw the headline that Natalie Portman is engaged and *gasp* also pregnant. Scandal! Except that it's really not, because we've evolved into a society where, especially in Hollywood, marriage equals neither happiness or longevity. This is not to say that I am opposed to marriage because well....last time I checked there's a big fatty ring on my finger and all of the commitment, baggage and responsibility that comes with it. But the point is, society as a whole is moving away from this idea that marriage is a necessity when it comes to having children or stability. In fact, situations like the one we're seeing with Natalie Portman where it's like "Oh look, I'm pregnant, better get engaged" so people can appease the expectations of society and family are the ones that most often fail after a very short period of time. And the true irony of it all is that we have the homosexual population fighting so hard to get the right to enter a legal marriage and being denied the right because it violates the sanctity of marriage that the heterosexual portion of the population tossed out the window years ago.

But none of this is my point. I'm getting there, eventually, when I finish rambling. Anyway, after reading the short article on Natalie, I did the ultimate sin of all blog reading. I started reading the comments. Anyone who wants to keep their blood pressure low should avoid reading comments on blogs or news articles because the stupidity of some people is so astounding that you do find yourself wondering how they exist in this world without getting beaten over the head with sticks. And if we ever do decide to beat them, I'll volunteer. So, as I scroll through the comments I see several about how terrible it is that she isn't even married yet and is pregnant. I expected that, I really did. What I didn't expect was the comment that read "There is enough supporting research out there that indicates that children are better off in married families. Developmentally, financially, psychologically, etc... Women should keep this in mind!"

And then my head exploded.

I'm so offended by this comment because it completely pins the blame for unplanned pregnancy on the woman involved. Really? Because I'm pretty sure some jackass's penis was involved at some point. Ok, that's unfair. I'm sure that more often than not, the penis owner is not actually a jackass, but you get my point. I have no idea why people get this impression that it's only women involved in unplanned pregnancy, or that it's only women who are responsible for children born out of wedlock. Yes, women have birth control, but it fails. And if the guy involved is at all concerned about that happening, then he should double bag it as a back up plan. I am concerned that women tend to get labeled as the irresponsible ones in these situations. More than that, I find it so interesting that more often than not, people believe that the women may have done something on purpose to make sure they got pregnant, or that they somehow wanted it because all women want ten thousand babies right? It's genetically wired into us right? I mean I know that 99% of my thoughts throughout the day involve babies and wanting ten thousand of them, so I'm sure everyone else must be the same or something. Or MAYBE, just MAYBE women are typically nurturing and motherly beings but they still have a working brain and often understand that maybe ten thousand babies just isn't the right choice for them. I just love that WOMEN are the only ones who have to remember that chilren are better off in married families. And I'm sure this is a true statement, if the married family is stable and nurturing and creates a positive environment for the children. Of course, there are those abusive marriages and the home lives that come with them to consider. I'm sure the kids are better in those married families right?

So I guess my point is that I'm so sick of women being deamonized for something that is also the part of another person involved in the situation, and that person often gets off completely unscathed. I blame that fucking Adam and Eve. And maybe god since he set Eve up to take the fall for all the bullshit that was about to go down by eating some tasty fruit. Why didn't he pick Adam? I'm just sayin'...As a woman I'm tired of hearing about how irresponsible we are when men are also irresponsible. Sometimes I wonder if it were men having babies if the irresponsibility would finally fall on them, but I doubt it.

And this is not to bash men, really, because most of my friends are men and honestly I prefer their lack of drama and theatrics and their honesty, so I have a lot of respect for men. I'm just saying that I can't stand listening to women take the fall for something where there was also a penis involved as well. I'm just saying being a woman comes with a lot of bullshit sometimes, and we should all remember that.

And congrats to Natalie Portman and stuff...

Adventures With An Elderly Dog

For the past 5 years or so I have asked Jason to get me a puppy for every birthday, Christmas and anniversary and the response has always been "You have two dogs, you don't need a puppy". While this may be true, I am constantly reminding him that Simon is nearly 14 years old and in Lab years that's like....3 paws in the grave. Not that I want Simon to die or anything, because he's a good dog and I love him, but it is an eventual inevitability with a dog as old as he is.

What we are both beginning to realize, however, is that living with an elderly dog is as much of an adventure as living with a puppy. Gone are the days when Simon would never even think of peeing in the house, even if he refused to go outside for 3 days because he doesn't like to go out if it's too windy, or cold, or raining, or snowing, or too hot, or it's a Saturday in June. I'm just saying, the dog is picky. This has never been a problem before. He would resolutely refuse to go outside and he would hold it for days. Now when we sleep in on weekends, we wake up as soon as we hear Simon's snoring stop because if Simon is up, he has to go outside...NOW. If you have never tiptoed past your dog to avoid waking him up so you can get dressed before you have to take him outside, you have never lived. This is the only point where it's sort of lucky that he's gone deaf. We can talk and brush our teeth and he's totally oblivious. You just can't walk past him too closely, or he can smell you and it's all over. And on those nice occasions when we do wake him up and he doesn't go outside NOW, he leaves a trail of pee through our house so we can find him like some screwed up version of Hansel & Gretel. Because yes, he walks while he pees. He can't just go in one spot like a normal dog. The fact is, I'm not entirely sure he realizes he's drizzling through the house, and if he does realize it, I get the impression that he's trying to run away from his own peeing. Thus, pee trail. At least if he stayed in one spot I could get the rug shampooer out and only have to clean one place. When he walks, I have to follow the trail through the whole house. And inevitably that means down the stairs. Have you ever tried to shampoo pee off of your stairs? It's not fun.

And of course there are other things we get to enjoy as owners of an elderly pet. Your dog going senile is an adventure. This often manifests itself in Simon forgetting that we have fed him. Or thinking that every time we come home from ANYWHERE, he is supposed to be fed. We feed him after we get home from work every day, so apparently the leaving and coming back is a trigger for "Food time" to him. He will stand in front of his bowl and shuffle back and forth, grunting at us like we have done him some sort of horrible disservice. I'm 99% sure he isn't even hungry, but he firmly believes he MUST be fed because we left and came back. This often happens even if we've just gone out to get the mail and come back into the house.

He has also decided that now that he's old, he's going to do what he wants. This means walking out the front door whenever he pleases, drinking from the toilet, barking at everything that moves outside the house, sleeping all day, eating Sam's food, and vomiting on the floor whenever he's bored. And forget playing ball with him in the house. Now, when he gets really excited while playing, he spontaneously poops. It goes something like this:

*Jason throws ball*

*Simon chases ball and brings it back*

*Jason throws ball again*

*Simon chases ball and while chasing drops some poo on the floor*

*Simon looks at Jason as if to accuse him of being the one who pooped on the floor*

*Jason puts ball away*

*Simon stares at poop until it is cleaned up, highly offended that Jason would do such a thing*

This has become my life, day in and day out with the joys of an arthritic elderly dog. Where I used to worry that he was getting played with enough, I now worry that he got his daily aspirin. It's all an adventure.

And some days it makes me rethink that puppy idea.

Even The Mona Lisa has flaws

Sometimes I think that people, myself included, notice everyone else's flaws and we're pretty quick to point them out. I'm sort of awful about criticizing people when the truth is, I'm really not all that much better than anyone else. So, today I'm going to share some of my flaws, because it's good for me to remind myself how far from perfect I really am.

#1

I SUCK at taking empty shampoo and conditioner bottles out of the shower and taking them downstairs to the recycle bin. Seriously, I'm the worst ever.

#2 I have a ton of dishes that are hand-wash only and I use them almost every night to make dinner, and I almost never wash them before going to bed. I just leave them sitting in my sink all night, and I almost always have to wash all of the stupid dishes before I can cook dinner the next night. It's less than awesome.

#3 When I'm sick, I typically walk around the house carrying a box of tissues, and I tend to just leave tissues lying on the end tables or the night stand in my bedroom. Yes, this is gross. And I always clean them up and Lysol the tables after, but I do just let them sit around for days when I'm sick.

#4 I am really terrible about actually putting my clothes in a hamper. I have one. I don't use it. I just leave dirty clothes in a pile on the floor and wait until laundry day to wash them. I think the only person who appreciates this habit is my dog, who often makes a nest of the clothes pile at some point during the week. I'm not proud of this.

#5 Speaking of laundry, I almost never fold my laundry. I have no problems washing the clothes, drying the clothes, and putting the clothes into a laundry basket, but the actual folding process is just something I can't be bothered with. If Jason didn't fold the laundry every Sunday, I'd live out of the laundry basket all week. Laundry folding sucks.

I'm sure I have more, but this is a pretty decent starting list. Anyone else want to share?

It's All About Knowing What You Want

Back in June, when my 6 month contract with Thomson Reuters ended, I found myself facing the frightening fate that a lot of people around the country are facing right now. I found myself unemployed, and that was pretty nerve wracking. On top of that, Jason's long term subbing ended and he found himself unemployed as well. It was less terrifying for us than for a lot of other people, because we had savings to live off of and I was getting unemployment, but the word "Job" was a the top of the priority list. Jason got a temp job with Domino Farms, and that helped a little, but I knew that I really needed to get a job. And then I did. I took a job in August with a company that offered me more money than I've ever made, and suddenly money wasn't as big a worry, which felt better. And yet, it also felt like a failure. I had several interviews for teaching jobs, and nothing came from any of them. Sure, I had a job, but it wasn't doing what I really want to do.

Now, after working in my new cubicle job, doing the thing that's making me a lot more money than I've ever made, I find myself wanting nothing more than to walk into a classroom and take over teaching a bunch of kids. And, it's becoming more and more painfully obvious that the more time I spend in the cubicle, the more likely it is that I won't ever get into that classroom. It's pretty heart breaking. What's worse is that I may be forced to choose between my family and my job. I've said all along that I don't want to pack up and move somewhere out of state just so that I can have a job, I don't want to leave my family, my friends, my niece and nephew, or my life that I've built here. As hard as it is not to be doing the job I've wanted to do for years, I can't say that I lead a bad life. I lead a really beautiful life. I don't want to leave it. So now I have to decide whether I want to be happy in my job, or happy in my personal life, and I have to wonder if the two are really separate entities. Right now I know that living in Ohio for the majority of my week, sitting alone in a hotel room, living out of a suitcase, that's not the life I want. And the travel is temporary, but the feeling I have about being stuck in that cubicle every day isn't. I can't work with my drama students anymore, and I find myself talking about them constantly while at work. I find myself missing those kids almost as much as I miss my family when I'm out of town. I miss the excitement I see in them every time I'm up there, and I even miss the things they do that drive me insane.

When taking all of this into consideration, I have to say the thing I have the hardest time dealing with is hearing people who are doing what they supposedly want to do, and what they claim is their dream and their passion (and some of those people are doing exactly what I wish I could be doing every day) and complaining about it as if it's the biggest hassle, or the worst thing they're doing. I hate seeing countdowns to the weekend, or to vacations from people who claim they're doing what they love. I am definitely not doing what I love, but I don't find myself waking up on Monday and starting the countdown to Friday. Sure, everyone has a bad week every now and again, but some people do this constantly and I sometimes want to say "Then quit and do something else!" When it's people who are teaching, I want to shake them and tell them there are a lot of people out there like me who want to do what they're doing so if they're so miserable, so give it to someone who really wants it. I think that the one thing I've learned from all of my work experiences since leaving my student teaching is that I know exactly what I want and I know exactly where I want to be. I just wish I knew how to get there. But, it doesn't mean I'll stop trying.

Memories For Sale

Anyone who knows me well knows that I have an obsession with seeing the inside of other people's houses. To be honest, it was the most exciting part of house hunting for me. And this doesn't apply to the houses of people I know, just to the houses of complete strangers. There was an episode of the show "Dead Like Me" where George, the main character, talked about how she always loved Halloween because it meant seeing inside the houses of strange people and I practically jumped off the couch and shouted "THAT'S SO ME!" And, while I know it's a weird thing to enjoy, I just can't help it.

Now that our house hunt is over, I sometimes wander over to real estate websites and go through houses with photo galleries for their listings so that I can enjoy peeking inside of people's houses without feeling like a total creeper. Tonight, as I was sitting in my hotel in the middle of nowhere Ohio feeling a bit bored and lonely as the rain hammered the window of my hotel room and missing home, I decided to go clicking around to see what some other people called home. I was struck when my website search pulled up an address I recognized all too well. It was the second address I could recite from memory at three years old, the first being my own home address. My grandma's house was being sold. This isn't the first time her house has been sold, since she sold it herself years ago when she moved in with my family, but as far as I'm aware this is the first time it's been on the market since she sold it herself. Over the years, I hadn't thought too much about the place. Right after Grandma passed away I was feeling nostalgic and drove past it a few times, but the outside didn't look anything like I remembered and what I saw didn't have any of my grandma in it. The buyers had remodeled it and added on, so the outside looked completely different.

Tonight as I clicked on the photo gallery photos of the inside of the house, I was a little shaken. Where the outside didn't look anything like my childhood memories, aside from the large pine tree they left in the front yard, the inside is more like my memories than I ever expected. Despite the remodel, they kept a lot of the inside the same. They kept the vintage door casings, and the front door into the mud room is original to the house. The kitchen has new cabinets and countertops, but the layout is the same and I could see myself standing next to my grandma at the stove waiting to take pretzels out of the oven early in the morning when I was about 9 years old. I think they turned grandma's bedroom into the family room, and I found myself wondering if they left the wall and doorways between the kitchen and the now dining room where my cousins and siblings and I spent hours running in circles between the rooms chasing each other.

Suddenly, as I was looking at the photos, I felt like I just didn't want anyone living in that house where I had so many memories. I found myself wondering if the laundry chute was still there, and if it still went to the strange cage-like contraption in the basement. I wondered if any other children had locked a sibling in that cage and thrown things down the chute at them like we used to do to my brother. I looked at the back porch, which had been turned into a sun room and remembered how grandma used to hang wind chimes out there. I wondered if the basement was still damp and a little creepy. I wondered if they were as perplexed as everyone else was when it came to figuring out what to do with the nook in the dining room that used to hold the organ that my grandmother owned but didn't really know how to play. I wondered what they had done to the upstairs, which there were not photos of, where my mom used to sleep when she was growing up. I wondered if they kept the built in dressers that used to fascinate me when I was little. And, among all of this wondering, I found it sad that someone else would live there. Someone who was not related to me, who could not look through the pictures and share any memories with me. I never thought about this when grandma sold the place originally, because she was still around and my memories were not tied to her home. Now that she's gone, I am sad. I hope a new family is able to make their own memories there, and that they can look back at their time there and laugh like I do, or share stories with each other like my cousins and sisters and I have done over and over again. I also found myself sort of wanting to call the agent and schedule a viewing, just so I could walk through it one last time.

So with that, and my nostalgia fresh in my mind, I leave you with some photos of my grandma's house as it is now. Not as I remember it, but hopefully as someone else is remembering it, and hopefully their memories are as fond as mine.

No, I'm Not Offended By a Little Girl With a Foul Mouth

Last week Jason and I got the movie "Kick-Ass" in the mail from Netflix and watched it. I had heard a lot of people mentioning that I was going to be blown away by Hit-Girl in the movie, so I put it into the DVD player and sat on my sofa eagerly anticipating the impending carnage. I wasn't disappointed, since about ten minutes in there was a scene with poor little Mindy, who would become Hit-Girl, being shot in the chest by her dad so she could feel how a kevlar vest works. That was a bit disturbing, but also kind of funny.

As I watched the film, I did something I usually do and started looking up the trivia on IMDB to find out extra tidbits about what I'm watching. Overwhelmingly, I came across info about people throwing a fit that Hit-Girl, with her innocent girl face and cheerful smile, at a mere ten or eleven years old was spouting lines like "So you cunts want to play huh?" or "Show's over mother fuckers!" and how wholly inappropriate this was because a little girl shouldn't be saying such things. As I read this information all I could think was "Why? Why is it so wrong and inappropriate for this sweet little girl to say these things? If she were a boy, no one would be saying crap about this!" and let's face it, I'm totally right. Plus, I found myself sitting there thinking about all of the movies where girls walk around whining about losing their boyfriend, or give up their family and friends to be with some guy who might be "the one". Or the movies where girls have to be rescued by some guy because they don't have the ability to take care of themselves. Is this how girls should be in films? Why do they have to be that way? Why can't they be foul mouthed ass kickers just like their male counterparts? I love that Hit-Girl actually saved the guy's ass in this movie, multiple times. And, on top of that, I love that she did it in a skirt!

The more I think about it, the more I wonder where the balance is between what makes a strong female and what makes a girl who is helpless and depends on a man to provide for her, or take care of her. I actually made a joke the other day when I was telling Jason that I want to learn to bake pies, and I want to get all Martha Stewart-y if we host Thanksgiving this year and then I said "Jesus! When did I turn into Suzie Homemaker? I feel like I should hate myself right now!" Then I started thinking about that attitude and realized that baking and enjoying having a clean house doesn't make me some weak-willed female who needs to be taken care of. It just means that's what I like. Know what else I like? Building things. Renovating houses. Using power tools. Changing the brakes on my car. Those are the things that make me the strong female who takes care of myself. So, I guess my conclusion was that you can make pie and change your brakes and that's ok. I'm sure there are guys who do it. Just like adorable little Hit-Girl can have pigtails and wear a skirt, and do an aerial cartwheel while slitting your throat. Two sides of the same coin.

So, to all of the people who are pissed that the little girl in the purple bob wig is slitting throats and calling people fuckers, I guess I have to say that I want to know where you all were when there were teenage boys doing similar things in other movies? Why do you get mad simply because the person with the foul mouth also has a vagina? I guess you probably can't be a mommy if you swear, or if you are a hard core martial artist. Maybe it just threatens someone's warped 1950's view of what a girl should be.

But, to be honest, Hit-Girl is my freaking hero.